Existing buildings define the main streets and the skylines of the nation’s communities. Yet, as these communities evolve to address changes in their economy and populations, they don’t always have the mechanisms in place to assure the safety and security of their citizens while providing building owners and developers a cost-effective means for updating the existing building stock to meet changing needs. Existing building codes provide just such a mechanism.

Communities across the United States state are faced with decaying, blighted and vacant existing buildings, yet half of all states do not enforce existing building codes at the state level.

In this white paper, the NCGBCS, in its effort to support high-performance buildings and communities, examines effective strategies for promoting the adoption of existing building codes, as well as developing and implementing educational and training programs for owners, builders, contractors, design professionals and, most importantly, code enforcers. NCGBCS also addresses some of the implementation challenges and enforcement issues, and the technical changes necessary to improve future editions of the codes.